


there will be feasting (and dancing)

by thecanary



Series: do no harm/take no shit (urbex animorphs au) [1]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Graffiti, alternate universe - no morphing, being in stormwater drains for recreation, drain kids, just enough banter, urban exploring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-21 01:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16567133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecanary/pseuds/thecanary
Summary: some kids in a drain, doing some urban exploring, having a laugh





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sn1ktt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sn1ktt/gifts).



"Big torch big dick!" Marco yelled, brandishing his dolphin torch a little too recklessly as he read off graffiti near the drain's entrance.  
"Guess we'd better swap then," Rachel replied, offering the head torch she'd brought. 

They were living out teenage rebellion in the best way they knew how - trespassing. Marco argued it wasn't really trespassing if no one lived there, Tobias countered that he didn't care in the first place, and Cassie was logical enough to point out that it's a drain. No one cares about teenagers being in a drain. That was the most rational solution, so it was unsurprising that it had come from Cassie. 

Cassie was also the one who had found the entrance, figuring out the easiest place to get in in order to find the best grill rooms and drain chambers. Jake was the one who'd wanted to do something with all of them, something to celebrate nearly being finished high school. The rest just enjoyed either the delinquency of it, or the promise of somewhere where they wouldn't get caught spray painting. The walked in relative single file through the drain, chatting and singing along the way. 

"Left or right?" Jake asked, from his position in the front of the line.  
"Aren't they parallel?" Tobias retorted. Tobias was closer to the back, carrying the bag with all the spray paint, walking in front of Ax, who was last in line.  
"They might vary in graffiti," Ax said. "Depending on whether people are more likely to pick left or right."  
"It did say 'keep left' back there," Cassie added. "Though that could be the directions once you get to the temple."  
"May as well keep left to be sure." And with that Jake continued down the left passage, his torch in hand, trying to not get distracted by Ax's incessant desire to apparently make the drain feel as strobe lit as possible. 

It felt crowded with the six of them, even if there was no one else in the drains as far as they knew. At the first grill room they got to - where water could pour in from above in times of rain, with a small grill keeping people from entering from the grill room itself - they stopped for a while, sitting and standing across the room, avoiding getting too wet. 

Well most of them were. Marcus, in cheap bright purple slip on shoes had almost instantly fallen over while avoiding the centre of a drain early on, to avoid stepping in water, and had ended up landing in it. To him it had then become a game to see who else he could get to fall in. The main non-participant of the game was Cassie. 

"But Cassie? You like, work on a farm."  
"I live on a farm Marco, and help with animals."  
"Exactly! Housework!"

It took everything Cassie had to not roll her eyes or say something too scathing. She was a kind person, and it showed.

"Marco, just because I'm fine being dirty in my own house, because of animals I own, doesn't mean I want to fall into drain water because an animal named Marco is like that."  
"Well when you explain it like that -" he cut off, in an attempt to keep her distracted when he went to move towards her, but instead he stepped on a spot of wet concrete and slipped into the puddle at the centre of the grill room. "Okay, you win this one," he said, gesturing tipping an imaginary hat off to Cassie, not bothering to get out of the water immediately. 

Tobias on the other hand had set about tagging the start of the next section of drain, a feather, spray painted in a white silver colour (using a stencil he made himself) and then going around the outside with all the colours he had. Spray paint was an easy present to buy for a near eighteen year old, so even with only vague guardians, and just the rest of the group as friends, he tended to have a fair amount of it. He wasn't an artist, but something in him wanted to fight the system, do crime, all that, so long as it didn't hurt anyone else. That was the point of view most of the group agreed with. 

In fact, after finishing making sure Marco actually had got out of the filthy drain water, Cassie came over to stand beside Tobias, extending her hand for a can of paint. 

"What colour?" Tobias asked.  
"I don't mind. Purple?"

Tobias nodded - always the quiet type, and checked at his feet for the purple can, handing it to Cassie. She began painting the side of the drain opposite Tobias's feather. Big block letters, taking up the full height of the drain once she was finished. Do no harm, take no shit she'd written. The general consensus of the group, Cassie liked leaving it around when they went places as a group - only ever when they went as a group - she considered it their group tag. Ax had tried once to turn it into an acronym, hideously pronounced DeNHuTeNS. It didn't catch on. Once everyone who'd wanted to had tried their hand at tagging, Ax adding his name to the mess of graffiti on one side of the grill room, and Marco had sat up as close to the grill as he could, catching as much sun as possible to help dry off before they returned to the dim dark of the drains. 

The next tunnel, to get through to the alleged 'temple' was larger, they could walk as more of a group than a single file, none of them having to bow their heads to avoid hitting the ceiling. Small run off drains dotted the walls at intervals, with at least one of them shining a torch down each of them. 

"Oof," Marco said, peeking into the run off drain, that would only just be big enough to crawl through with arms tight to your sides. "What if you went in there and the 'it follows' monster was after you?"  
Rachel scoffed before replying. "Well you'd be safe."

Marco made a sound of mock offense, turning around to pretend to knock the torch from Rachel's head. 

"Shouldn't you be more worried about the 'It' monster?" Ax asked, his voice not betraying whether he too was mocking Marco or if he was being genuine. 

By this stage the three of them had been more or less left behind, the others further along the drain, but apparently still within earshot, as could be told by Jake's yell of a reply. 

"The 'It' monster is just called Pennywise the Clown!"

Marco, Rachel, and Ax hurried to catch back up with the other three, although Ax still found it necessary to rebut Jake. 

"That takes longer to say than 'the It monster'."

"Aw c'mon, lets just say any monster in here wouldn't have a chance against our ragtag bunch of misfits," Tobias said. "And be quiet, I want to appreciate the temple."

 

As he spoke, they reached the point where the tunnel widened, each of them surprised, the temple not quite what they expected.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shorter chapter this time but i had to bash this one out amongst my maths homework and revision el oh el. it's my lovely friend for whomst im writing this fic's bday today so this is a bit of a happy bday present! i hope to get another chapter out tmrw of a bit more appropriate length tho!

The ceiling of the temple was higher than they’d been prepared to expect, much higher than their heads than any point in the drain previously. It was also more cluttered, a twisted bike frame, one wheel missing entirely and the other a few metres away, was in the water. In the first section of the temple the water was ankle depth, but following that there was another plateau of cement, making the floor level a little higher. 

Again, everyone save Marco did their best to avoid the water, tip toeing across broken cement chunks and the metal scraps that littered the metre or so of deep water; Marco on the other hand powered through it, reaching the plateau first, his shoes soaking wet. 

“You’re gonna get tetanus,” Rachel said, one eyebrow raised in his direction.   
“Rachel, he’s fine, so long as he didn’t cut himself. Don’t worry,” Cassie reassured.   
“Oh. I wasn’t worried.”

That was a hard comment not to laugh at, and Marco didn’t even accept the challenge, a huffing snort coming out before he burst out in proper laughter. Tobias exhaled heavily through his nose with a shake of his head, while Cassie giggled. 

“You know, that’s fair,” Marco said. “But one of you has to promise to nurse me back to health when I do get tetanus.”  
“When?” Ax asked sceptically.   
“Well it’s an inevitability at this point, isn’t it?” was Marco’s reply.

No one disagreed, which must go to say something. The rest of them made it to the plateau fast enough, the sound of cars above their heads giving them a vague idea of where they were. The temple itself was impressive enough to settle down in, finding dry spots of ground to sit down and chat, though no one could resist as their eyes kept glancing over to the tunnel on the other side. None of them had a deadline to be home by; Rachel’s and Jake’s parents accepted that they’d be out until they weren’t anymore, Marco’s dad was thrilled that his son wasn’t getting into trouble, Cassie’s parents could trust her to be responsible, and Ax and Tobias always reassured everyone that no one would worry about when they got home. It was a fair point, considering the two stayed over at someone else’s house most nights a week. 

“Anyone have the time?” Tobias asked. “My phone is minutes from dying.”  
“Just after five,” Jake said - it was as close as he could get from using the light of torches and small amount of sunlight to read his analogue watch.   
“Five eighteen,” Ax offered. The others might make fun of him for wearing two watches - analogue and digital - but they couldn’t deny that it did come in handy from time to time.   
“Anyone got a curfew today?” Rachel asked.   
“Gotta be home before ‘too late’,” Cassie said. “And help around at the farm tomorrow.”

No one else contributed a curfew. They didn’t need to say out loud why Rachel had asked - she was desperate to go through the tunnel, keep going through the system to see where the main exit would be. If they kept going for too much longer it would mean there’d be no light from grills and the smaller drain entrances (ones only big enough for water or rats), but their torches were up to the task. 

Still, they waited a while before heading off, not wanting to exhaust themselves when they didn’t fully know what was ahead. Once they’d figured that they’d waited around long enough, drank water and ate some sweets, they started to head off again. Although Cassie had looked into the temple, she hadn’t read anything about what came after it, so what came next was going to be something of an adventure into the unknown. None of them had anything against that. If they weren’t people who thrived on the unknown, on the ‘underground’ (forgive the pun), they’d hardly be the right people to get a thrill out of exploring in the way they did. 

Rachel led the way - her torch was the brightest, and she was raring to keep going; she figured if she pushed ahead then the others would have to follow, and she was mostly right, as Jake followed suit behind her, Cassie behind him, Tobias next, followed by Ax, with Marco holding up the rear. 

“Hey! Did you know my light could do this!” Marco wasn’t asking a question as he hit the button on his light that surely couldn’t have been marketed as anything other than ‘annoying’ as the light flashed between red and white light at a frequency that would make club lighting jealous. 

“It won’t in a minute,” Rachel threatened. 

Marco took the hint and, not wanting to risk a broken light when they were so far underground, he turned that particular setting off. 

It didn’t take long before the tunnel started to feel like it was going uphill. Now, it wasn’t unusual for drains to vary in height, up for a while then back down, same as it going left for a while before veering right again, but it seemed like the tunnel they were in to just keep heading upwards. 

“Surely we should be out by now?” Tobias asked. “Like, the entrance was way lower than this, and we’re definitely above the temple’s highest point by now.”  
“We travelled pretty far beyond the temple by now though.” Cassie was right. It was after six o’clock now, meaning the trip to get back to the entrance they had used wouldn’t get them out of the drain system before eight, in all likelihood.   
“We could be going up a hill,” Ax offered.


	3. Chapter 3

After a time it became clear that Ax had to be right. It wasn’t unusual, however for him to be so forthcoming with his answer was. Of course, there was bound to be a bit of lagging behind, as some of the group felt the need to take a picture of every graffitied penis (Marco), anti-government slogan (Cassie), website URL or coordinates (Ax), or instance of the word ‘gay’ (Rachel and Tobias, surprisingly, and Marco, unsurprisingly) that they saw. 

Nonetheless, the tunnel persisted upwards, at such a slope that it was still easy to walk along, it didn’t feel like climbing or hiking, but it was very obvious. There were a few small entrances, drains where water would pass through, and as they walked past them, each more than ten minutes away from the previous at least, it was getting darker outside. 

“You reckon this will be an exit then? Or just another room like the temple?” Tobias mused.  
“It’s gotta be an exit, right. Like, going up a hill, something to drain water from it, it’s gotta have an opening,” said Rachel.   
“Might not be an opening big enough for us though,” was Cassie’s reply.   
Jake gave an understanding hum. “Guess we’ll see, won’t we.”  
“I’m betting on exit,” Rachel said. Tobias and Ax chimed in to agree with her, while the others remained quiet, waiting to see how it was going to pan out. 

It wasn’t much longer again before the tunnel took another slope, going upwards at a further angle than before. It wasn’t an angle of walking that any of them would be able to maintain for any significant amount of time. 

Seconds before Jake was going to suggest turning around and heading back down the downhill, Rachel called out. 

“Hey! I see light,” she said, and she was off like a flash, not quite running with her torch in hand and backpack weighing her down, but she was setting a pace of double or triple the slow wander they’d been doing before. 

Everyone followed. Who would they be if they weren’t willing to follow Rachel. It got steeper though, until the point where they could see the light - huge and vast, definitely a big grill if not a full opening - the tunnel went completely vertical. There was a rusty ladder, same as they’d have to use if they were prone to climbing up to or down from man holes, and they each made their way up. Although the natural light was a huge change after the hours underground, it certainly wasn’t bright outside. As if reading everyone’s mind, Ax checked his watch. 

“Quarter to seven pm,” he announced, to no one in particular, but coming to everyone’s aid nonetheless. 

The opening itself was like a room - a cement ceiling about a metre and a half wide and ten metres long, but the walls, instead of being cement and coming straight down, were grills, each reaching out about ten or fifteen metres from the ceiling, the ground of the room (once they’d ascended the ladder) on a slight slope over the whole surface of the floor. Looking outside, they could see they were on a nature reserve somewhere, although ‘somewhere’ was definitely as specific as they could get without exiting and walking around, especially given the quickly vanishing traces of light. 

“Let there be light!” Marco announced, once the six of them were all on the ‘floor’ level of the room, his arms out wide, as though he were a pastor of the drains. 

The effect failed on a few fronts, the foremost being that moments after he said it a cloud passed behind the already setting sun. Rachel humoured him and turned her torch back on, flashing it in his direction, waving it back and forth as one would at a concert when a slow song is playing. 

Cassie and Jake had made their way over to one of the concrete slabs that made up half the floor, sitting lazily, relieved to take the weight off their feet. Cassie stretched her legs out, reaching for her toes, while Jake stretched backwards, interrupting their impromptu yoga class by cracking what sounded like each one of his vertebrae. Cassie gave a theatrical grimace and flinch, not wanting to let such an impressive crack of Jake’s back go unacknowledged. 

In the corner, on the ledge above the drain they had climbed out of - an impressive looking drop if one were to fall in - stood Tobias, tagging his feather again. He figured the harder it was to stand where he needed to tag, the less likely it’d be for the tag to be painted over quickly. Rachel had brought markers, not good for big pieces that would be better off sprayed, but easy enough to write a few words with. 

Her words of choice on this day were ‘transcendentally transitioning’, which earned mumbles of agreement from others in the group. Marco took the chance to borrow one of her markers - most of what they used for urban exploring was a free for all anyway - and, in handwriting that teachers for years of schooling had described as ‘illegible’ ‘awful’ ‘appalling’ and ‘deserving of nothing more than stricter handwriting practise’, he scrawled ‘DRAINS ARE FOR THE GAYS’. 

“It’s true,” he said, to no one in particular. 

Now that they were out in the mostly open, Ax was checking their coordinates, already planning the map that he was planning on drawing on their second go through the drain. That’s what they called the second trip through anything - ‘the map explore’, for the main reason that Ax drew (yes, hand drew) a map of where they were as they went along. That was also why it always took so much longer to go through a drain the second time. 

“I found an exit, kind of,” Ax said. He was stood on the edge of the room, close to the grill that seemed to cover down the the ground. “Someone’s pulled part of the lower bars out here, I might be able to squeeze through.”

And he did just that. Tobias - finished tagging now - made his way over and followed suit, Jake and Cassie stayed where they were, not wanting to even try to get through the ridiculously small hole in the grill. Marco and Rachel almost raced over, but both thought better of it upon thinking for a second longer on the slope of the room and hole in the middle. 

Once the four who made it out were assembled, they looked out, where the last of the setting sun could be seen, and figured out where they were. 

They couldn’t wait to come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy late bday!! hope u enjoy th rest of th fic!
> 
> also uhh? disclaimer? dont drain alone, dont go in drains in the rain, make sure ppl know where you are etc. etc.   
> i feel like i should put that there


End file.
